


Keep Your Dreams Close (and Your Nightmares Closer)

by oxford_manners



Category: Inception (2010), Kingsman (Movies)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 17:04:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12939774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxford_manners/pseuds/oxford_manners
Summary: Arthur Darling - point man extraordinaire - stumbles across a rather... apocalyptic secret while rooting around in Chester King's mind on a corporate espionage job.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once the idea came into my head, it refused to be left alone.

Chester King bore an uncanny resemblance to Miles, Arthur thought as he checked the cannula and slid the needle into the old man’s vein.

And that, it seemed, was where the similarities ended.

The job went off without a hitch, which surprised Arthur considering how much security the team had had to penetrate through just to get to the old fart. He shot himself out of the dream early, having obtained the names of King’s contacts inside the military that were preferentially granting Arda Technologies, of which King was majority share-holder, multibillion dollar government contracts.

What Arthur had _not_ intended was to stumble upon his mark’s other secrets.

Kingsman. Valentine. And the mother of all betrayals.

Against humanity.

Against the agents that entrusted their lives to him.

It made Arthur’s stomach twist. He had had men’s live entrusted to him before, years ago when he was Captain Darling. To damn humanity, well, that was almost easy. Humanity was abstract, wasn’t it? To consider leaving his men to slaughter, he couldn’t fathom it.

He needed to find this Merlin guy. Or rather, Hamish Macrae.

-

Getting a message to Macrae was a complete pain in the ass. Arthur considered himself paranoid to the nth degree – just ask his two dozen aliases. This guy though, he really took it to a whole new level. In the end, Arthur had resorted to the rather primitive method of simply taping an enclosed note to the front door of the man’s house which, by the way, had also been a pain in the ass to track down.

He watched from his car as the bald, severe looking man looked around and pulled out a pair of latex gloves from his coat pocket – who the fuck just carried around extra latex gloves? – and carefully pulled out Arthur’s note.

Now it was just a waiting game.

-

UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Arthur squinted blearily at his phone.

“I swear to god, Eames,” he grumbled and smeared his thumb across the screen, “Eames, you fucktard, if you’ve woken me up at fuck o’clock – ”

“Not quite, I'm afraid,” an unfamiliar voice interrupted.

It sounded Scottish. Or at least what Arthur thought was Scottish. Eames had done impressions of the billion or so regional accents around the British Isles for him before, and this one sounded Scottish. Hard to tell from four words though.

He sat up in his bed and rubbed a hand over his tired face. “Mr. Macrae, I take it?”

“You left a note on my door.”

Might as well cut to the chase seeing as how they had little time to waste.

“That’s right. Is this line secure, Mr. Macrae?” He asked. “And private?”

“Private?”

“From your agency,” Arthur clarified.

“My agency,” Macrae repeated.

“Stop fucking repeating what I'm saying. Kingsman, is this line safe from Kingsman. Yes or no, Macrae?”

“…Yes.”

“Good.” First things first. “You need to abort agent Lancelot’s mission immediately. He’s heading into a trap.”

"I beg your pardon?”

“Chester King, your Arthur, is compromised. This is going to sound, as your Brits like to say, completely mental, so listen carefully. Chester King agreed to take part in Richmond Valentine’s plan to cull the world population by inducing violent psychosis through the use of SIM cards which Valentine plans to release early next year under the pretense of providing free phone and internet access.”

Total silence. Arthur chose to take that as a positive indication of Merlin being willing to listen.

“Chester is about to throw everyone under an apocalyptic bus. Excepting, of course, any that have already accepted similar invitations to Valentine’s side.”

“May I ask... how you came about this information?”

“Straight from the source,” Arthur said, honest but giving nothing else away. Kingsman didn’t know about dream work yet. If they had, Chester’s mind would have been militarized.

“He told you?”

“Not exactly,” the point man hedged, “if you don’t believe me, check him for a scar behind his right ear. Meanwhile, unless you want a dead agent on your hands, you need to pull agent Lancelot back. At the very least, stall him.”

“It concerns me that you know about our organization at all,” Merlin said.

“I understand, but what should concern you even more is the safety and wellbeing of your agent.”

For a moment, Arthur worried that Merlin was about to disregard everything he had just been told.

“1800 tonight. National Gallery. The Fighting Temeraire.”

Arthur looked at his phone. The fucker had hung up on him.

“Rude.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merlin meets Arthur face-to-face at the National Gallery.

Arthur waited until Macrae had been waiting a good five minutes before taking a seat next to the man. As expected, he sent Arthur a ‘what the fuck?’ side eye, as one would to a stranger that sat too close when there was obviously another four-feet stretch of bench available.

“It always makes me feel a bit melancholy,” Arthur mused, “Grand old war ship. Being ignominiously haunted away to scrap… The inevitability of time, don’t you think? What do you see?”

Apparently, the Scot was in no mood for philosophical discourse about a painting.

“A bloody big ship,” he snapped and made to stand up, “Excuse me.”

“Merlin,” Arthur said, stopping him with only a name. “How is James?”

Merlin froze before slowly sitting down again. He eyed Arthur with undisguised suspicion. “Alive,” then he gruffly added, “Thanks to you.”

“You’re welcome,” Arthur said pleasantly and extended a hand, “Arthur Darling, at your service.”

“Hamish Macrae, but you already knew that,” Merlin narrowed his eyes, which flicked down at the proffered hand, “you seem to know a lot, Mr. Darling. Especially about things you oughtn’t.”

“I do,” he agreed, “did you have a chance to speak with Mr. King today?”

“He had the scar. Like you said he would.”

“He’s a traitor,” Arthur said bluntly, never one to mince words, “and I’m going to need your help in taking him and Valentine down.”

“My help?”

“I’m not usually in the business of saving the world.”

 _Unlike you_ , was heavily implied.

“What _are_ you in the business of then?” Merlin probed. Arthur could learn to like to this gruff man. He was direct and straightforward, much like Arthur himself.

“Information. Secrets.”

“Blackmail.”

Arthur’s face went pinched at that. “Nothing so crass. I obtain secrets for interested parties. What they do with it,” he shrugged, “is none of my business.”

“How can I know you’re not in league with Valentine, that this isn’t some entrapment ploy to test my allegiance? How would you know about this… _plot_ if you weren’t in on it?”

“Would it help to know how I obtained the information?” Arthur said, leaning in, “About the plan? About you? Kingsman?”

“It’d be a bloody good start,” Merlin said.

“Would you like to know a secret?” Arthur was close enough to whisper into Merlin’s ear. “I plucked the information straight from Chester’s sick. Delusional. Mind.”

Merlin jerked away and abruptly stood up.

The gallery had gone completely silent. Everyone had stopped in their tracks to stare at the two of them.

“What the _fuck_ is going on?”

“Don’t worry, they won’t hurt you,” Arthur stood up slowly. “They’re wary of me.” He smoothed a hand down the line of his jacket. “As they should be. Do you remember how you got here, Hamish?”

“Don’t call me that,” he spat, “And of course. I took the tube. Walked here from Charing Cross station.”

“Did you really? _Think_. What’s the last thing you remember. You were sitting here, on this bench, but where were you before that?”

Music.

_Non, rien de rien._

Where was the bloody music coming from?

_Non, je ne regrette rien._

It felt like the music was _in his head_.

“I – I don’t understand,” Merlin stammered. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

“You will. See you topside, Hamish,” Arthur was saying.

He held a gun.

“What are you – ” Merlin started.

The American put the gun to his own temple.

“Wait. Don’t – ”

And pulled the trigger.

He blinked at the spray of blood.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Merlin's mind is blown. Figuratively speaking, of course.

“Jesus Christ,” Eames chuckled, “talk about trial by fire.” He winced as he pulled out the needle.

“I figured a demonstration was better than an explanation. Pictures and thousand words and all that,” Arthur said, shrugging, and passed Eames a gauze packet and bandaid. “Still haven’t gotten much better at that, have you?”

“Good thing I’m not a nurse,” the forger quipped as he dabbed at the pinprick of blood. He frowned. That was going to bruise. “I think you gave the poor man quite a shock.”

“Given what he does, I think it’s safe to say he’ll recover,” Arthur replied, “we’re a little pressed for time and I haven’t got time to coddle someone that doesn’t need coddling. Valentine is planning on launching his plan on Valentine’s Day.”

“Original,” the forger commented drolly.

“Which gives us seven, eight months to stop the psycho,” Arthur explained, “and these Kingsman guys are the best equipped to help us.”

“I’m sorry, but didn’t you say the boss of their group was compromised?”

“They operate at the highest level of discretion,” the point man continued. He sounded like he was quoting some pamphlet, “which means less bureaucratic bullshit to do what we need to do. We just have to figure out who the bad apples are.”

“Easier said than done.”

Arthur gave his partner a look, “Since when are you the pessimist, Mr. Dream-A-Little-Bigger-Darling?”

Eames put his hands up in a placating gesture, “I’m just saying. This is a bigger scale than we’ve dealt with before, love. Why not leave this to the professionals?”

“Because the professionals are also compromised. If Chester King’s information is correct, Valentine has already converted the Prime Minister, the heads of the Met, MI5, MI6, and a number of generals. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the _Queen_ is in on it!”

“Oi, that’s my monarch you’re talking about!” Eames cried out with mock affront, putting a hand to his chest.

“You were just complaining last week that a monarchy in the twenty-first century was an anachronistic and archaic waste of tax-payer money. Anyway, that’s the British government alone. The situation is probably the same in the US,” Arthur explained as he pulled the needle from Merlin’s arm and taped over the insertion point with a SpongeBob band-aid. “And I had such high hopes for Obama,” he sighed.

“So… you’re just going to take a handful of these Kingsman guys and break into Valentine’s house with guns ablazin’?”

“That’s bit more your style, Eames,” Arthur said, “I was thinking something more subtle.”

_No._

“Arthur.”

“Minimize that bloodshed and violence.”

“Arthur.”

“Which you have to agree is preferable.”

“Arthur. You want to do this _down under_ , don’t you?” Eames said, eyes going wide, “You want to pull another inception on Richmond fucking Valentine.”

“His intentions are good,” Arthur said, “Saving the planet and all that. It’s his methods that leave something to be desired.”

“Leave something to be desired? No shit, Sherlock,” Eames cried, “are you out of your mind? It would be easier to just kill him.”

“Listen. Look. If we’d caught onto this plan earlier, that might have worked. Right now, he has too many co-conspirators. It would be like chopping the head of a hydra, except there would be hundreds of heads to replace the original.”

“But do you really think we can change Valentine’s mind? He’s the worst sort of billionaire eccentric,” Eames said, “they’re usually very convinced of their… rightness. He’s not Fischer.”

“I’d at least like to try,” Arthur sighed, “before we resort to putting a bullet through his head.”

-

Merlin jerked awake with a gasp.

He blinked rapidly. Bed. Hotel room.

“Good nap?”

The American – Arthur, his brain provided helpfully – was leaning against the opposite wall.

“You,” he shook his head disbelievingly, “I watched you _die_.”

“Shooting yourself is the generally considered the easiest way to pull yourself out of a dream,” Arthur said, “unless the dreamer’s heavily sedated. In which case, you’re kind of fucked.”

That made… no sense whatsoever.

“You shot yourself.”

“Arthur, darling,” another man barged into the room laden with what looked like takeout, “is he – oh good, you’re awake. Very good. You hungry, mate? I’ve got curry and fish and chips.”

Merlin looked back at Arthur, who was watching him thoughtfully, gauging him for a reaction.

“I think I lost my appetite when I watched your friend blow his head off in front of me.”

“Yeah.” The other man was British, rough around the edges. “Takes some getting used to, but believe me, it’s a lot easier than stabbing yourself in the chest,” he said nonchalantly. “We weren’t meaning to give you a fright, but Arthur here figured you could handle it.”

“I’ve seen worse,” he answered and watched as Arthur gave his friends a ‘see, I told you’ sort of look. “I’d like an explanation though.”

The American pushed himself off the wall and pulled up a chair. He moved with confidence and poise, very much at ease in his suit. It reminded Merlin a bit of Harry, but where his friend moved with something akin to grace, this man was all military efficiency, his movements neat and crisp.

“Eames and I,” he gestured to the British man who had dropped his easy demeanor for a more pensive, guarded pose, “we’re in the business of information.”

“Information and secrets,” Merlin remembered, more memories of the dream starting to surface, “but not blackmail.”

“Very good,” Arthur grinned. He looked genuinely excited. “You have an innate knack for remembering dreams. That helps.”

What followed was an explanation that Merlin would have been hard-pressed to believe if not for having just _watched a man shoot himself_ right in front of him and then somehow still be sitting there not three paces from Merlin. PASIV. Somnacin. Forging. Militarization of the fucking _mind._

“And how did you two get into this dream business?”

“US Army. Counterintelligence,” Arthur answered.

“SAS. Zed Squadron,” Eames – Merlin still wasn’t sure if that was a first name or last name and if it was a name at all – said.

Merlin pursed his lips. “There is no such squadron.”

The Brit grinned rakishly, “Isn’t there?”

He didn’t know what to believe anymore.

“You’re criminals.”

That triggered a bark of laughter from Eames and a sly smirk from Arthur, “Not a crime if there’s no laws against it, is there?”


End file.
